About

My name is Hamid Shojaee, the founder of Axosoft, an Independent Software Vendor (ISV) that focuses on building tools to help development teams manage their projects and ship great software.

For the past 5 years, Axosoft has been shipping its flagship product, OnTime, at a ferocious pace. We released OnTime 2008, which is the 8th major release in OnTime’s young life in December of ’07. We have kept the blazing speed of releases by assembling an extremely talented, small team of developers and paying little attention to competitors. We’ve challenged our team to innovate, not only in the creation of the product, but also in our sales methods, marketing, support, user community and training.

The result has been phenomenal adoption of OnTime in the marketplace and incredible success for Axosoft. Far better than any of us had ever imagined and far outpacing average industry growth.

Along the way, we have tested a number of theories, have made lots of mistakes, have done a few things right and generally have learned a great deal about shipping software. This blog will attempt to share some of what we have learned in the hopes that it will help you and your team ship great software.

My Background

I am a developer at heart, but over the last 13 years I have learned a lot about the business side of software. Axosoft is my 2nd business venture. My first was a time and attendance software company that never took off in the way I had hoped. I left that company to join Microsoft.

Prior to starting Axosoft, I worked for several years in Microsoft’s Consulting Services (MCS) division. My job was to help Microsoft’s enterprise customers improve their development practices. I worked closely with a large number of development teams at various Microsoft enterprise customers and have seen a variety of development styles, methodologies and processes in action. Most of what I saw, you’ll want to avoid. Some of it was priceless. All of it was essential in helping me build a successful software company.

While at Microsoft I had a different perspective on things than many of my colleagues. Having come from a failed software company, I was paying close attention to Microsoft’s fine-tuned systems and business practices. It was extremely impressive to see such a fine-tuned machine from the inside. I also learned that it’s easy to beat large companies at their own game. Fine-tuned mega machines lack the passion that entrepreneurs bring to their work. Passion reveals itself in the products we create and users, left to their will, will choose a product that was created with heart over a product created by a machine any day.

Articles and Comments

I started this blog to create a manifesto of what it takes to ship software on time. I plan to keep the blog focused on that topic with about one article a week and although I read every comment and highly encourage you to leave comments with your opinion, I probably will not respond to comments, except in the form of future articles.

I hope you enjoy reading the articles as much as I enjoy writing them.

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Saw your 10 minutes video about SCRUM on youtube and followed your blog right after that. The way you presented it in the video was awesome and this blog itself. Very neat! Kudos for the simplicity and brevity you use throughout your videos and blogs, I like it.

i was looking for some good stuff regarding SCRUM, saw your “SCRUM in 10Min” video on youtube, signed up for a free account on your website, explore your software a bit and then saw your presence in Agile Conference 2011, your effective work in SCRUM zone is totally awesome.

My Company gave me a responsibility to launch SCRUM on Organization Level after a successful launch in I.T. Dept. I hope i will get many thoughtful stuff from your knowledge base.

This video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5k7a9YEoUI about the scrum development is really very good and its one of the most interactive video present on internet.
i have been shuffling video from last week but found this video to be the best among all.

Hamid i need your generous help , I have to give a presentation to a team of 15 people about SCRUM

Can you please provide a presentation (.ppt) that contain the content as show in this video . It would really very very great if you can help me .